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In a world of standardized big-name luxury, Nardi is an anomaly. A single-location, family-run shop that’s reserved, sepulchral, and occupying just five arches in a corner of a square, it is a globally renowned synonym for a geographically specific type of glamour. Today, as the shops of international luxury brands descend on the narrow streets of Venice’s San Marco district with their handbags and headscarves, Nardi remains an undiluted expression of an aesthetic that is uniquely and proudly Venetian.

Nicholas Foulkes is a British historian, author, and journalist who has written books on subjects as diverse as James Bond, porcelain, and the trench coat. He is best known for his critically acclaimed trilogy of 19th-century histories: Scandalous Society, a biography of Count d’Orsay; Dancing Into Battle; and Gentlemen and Blackguards. His other books for Assouline include High Society and Bals. Foulkes is luxury editor of British GQ, cofounder and editor in chief of Finch’s Quarterly Review, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and he writes for various other publications.